Asylum seekers are waiting to enter the United States in Tijuana; America’s origin story of border crossing faces a reckoning.

A border only becomes real when someone tries to cross it. On Sunday, November 25, a few hundred Central Americans marched in peaceful protest on the divide between the United States and Mexico, at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in Tijuana. They were marching to demand recognition as asylum seekers at the mercy of Donald Trump’s crackdown on the number of people processed through the port, and to draw attention to the abysmal living conditions at the border, where a rundown sports complex served as a shelter for thousands. A few threw rocks; some tried to cross together en masse; some were diaper-clad and carried by their mothers. Border Patrol responded by firing canisters of tear gas at them.

Americans have been hearing about members of “the migrant caravan” since early October, when a group of around 160 Hondurans gathered in San Pedro Sula, one of the world’s most violent cities, to begin a nearly 3,000-mile journey to Tijuana on foot. Within several days, the caravan had swelled to 1,600 people; Vice President Mike Pence urged them to stay home, or turn back. They kept on, arriving at the border in numbers that eventually reached almost 6,000.

The violence of Homeland Security’s response when faced with uninvited guests exposed a great hypocrisy in America’s foundational myth, which is, of course, about the defiance of borders. It had occurred only a few days after Thanksgiving, a federal United States holiday that claims to celebrate how the migrants who would become the first Americans had been welcomed by the people whose land they had crossed into—without waiting in line, without filling out paperwork. The contrast laid bare just how arbitrary a border really is, that “the border” is a myth itself, in spite of the categories it creates: who is on what side, and what that determines they deserve.

The current bottleneck at the border in Tijuana (a city that is home to many migrants from past waves of asylum seekers, including thousands of Haitians displaced by hurricanes and earthquakes) is the result of the Trump administration’s limits on asylum applications at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Officials are only letting between 40 and 100 people cross daily; as recently as six months ago in some cases, migrants who made the same journey would not face a delay. Due to what the Trump administration calls “metering,” officials are now telling asylum applicants to wait for days and sometimes months. It was a process that began with the Obama administration in 2016 that Trump has turned into standard practice.

Images from the late November clash at the border in Tijuana went viral. Though they provoked outrage, the pictures are arbitrary in their own way, too. The abhorrent use of force that they depict is just one aspect of our nation’s immigration crisis, in which physical violence is merely the zenith in a long series of far more mundane mechanisms, bureaucratic and legal, that both exploit undocumented migration and exacerbate the conditions that cause it. Similarly, portrayals of “the migrant caravan” as a monolith, as solely criminal, or victimized, flatten the people inside it, their myriad desires and motivations, hopes and despairs.

The photographs that Susan Meiselas has taken of asylum seekers in Tijuana for Vogue capture an ecosystem rather than an imaginary line. With the help of journalist Sarah Kinosian, Meiselas began a week after Border Patrol deployed tear gas at the San Ysidro Port of Entry and photographed the temporary inhabitants of the Benito Juarez Sports Complex—where migrants were first placed before a combination of flooding and overcrowding made it uninhabitable—and at the next shelter, some 12 miles away in a former concert hall called El Barretal. Faced with deplorable conditions, and Tijuana’s already strained resources in question, thanks to a newly elected Mexican president, some asylum seekers gave up their dreams of making it to America, choosing instead to be deported back to the violence and lack of opportunity they had fled in their home countries; others began the process of resettling in Mexico. Some took their chances and crossed into California under the cover of darkness—in the spaces between pylons, over fences, and where the wall ends on the moonlit beach and the border blurs.

Still, some 3,000 people continue to wait. Tijuana’s networks of activist and humanitarian organizations have mobilized to help. But the members of the caravan face uncertain futures; will Trump’s mandate at the border change? How long can they stay in limbo? Do you keep waiting, or do you try to cross?

For almost everyone Meiselas documented, even the waiting is better than the violence, poverty, and chaos they left behind. A kernel of the American dream is enough. “I saw a documentary on Ohio once,” said Luis, a 42-year-old man who had left San Antonio de Cortész, in Honduras, and was packing up his belongings to leave one shelter for another. “It seemed nice.”

A tent in the Benito Juarez Sports Complex in Tijuana.

Santos, 41, from San Rafael, Honduras, at Benito Juarez.

“I’m reading the New Testament for the second time since the start of the caravan. A church group gave it to me in Mexico City. This passage I’m reading—Psalm 47—to me is about needing a spiritual change to be able to survive. It’s close for me. I’ve always believed in God, but started reading the Bible three years ago, when a pastor working in my aunt’s neighborhood gave it to me. I was in a difficult moment in my life at the time. I was poor, had no job, my partner left me, I was drinking way too much, and never saw my kids. I lost a lot of time. God helped me get sober and has always steered me in the right direction. I now read the Bible every day. I wish I could memorize it. I am here with my 17-year-old son, Santo Ulysses. The gangs wanted him to join and started trying to recruit him. It’s either join or death. So we left. Only God knows what will happen now, but I will fight until the end for my son. I want his life to be better than mine, for him to be better than me. I want to be in the United States—for him to have those opportunities and to make something of myself along the way. I have four cousins in Los Angeles. If God permits, we’ll get through, even though it seems impossible at the moment. Now I’ll stay and work in Tijuana, doing anything until we cross.”

Luis, 42, from San Antonio de Cortés, Honduras, prepares to leave Benito Juarez.

“I got my number, 1451, from the guys running the asylum-seekers waiting list,” Luis says. “I will wait until it is my turn. They said it would be about two months before they call my number and I can go apply for asylum in the U.S. I have to go back every now and then to check progress. I’m fleeing political persecution in Honduras. I saw a documentary on Ohio once; it seemed nice.”

There is no guarantee of when exactly a number will be called. The wait list to start an asylum application was initially 3,000 people, according to an unofficial tally kept by the migrants themselves. Now there are more than 5,000 names, and wait time has doubled. A job fair near Benito Juarez placed some migrants in work in Baja California; some in maquiladoras, factories in Mexico.

Benito Juarez.

Waiting to leave Benito Juarez.

El Barretal, the new shelter Tijuana provided for the asylum seekers, is an abandoned concert hall and event space in eastern Tijuana. Though it is in much better condition, it’s 12 miles farther away from the border than Benito Juarez, and so despite overcrowding and dismal conditions, some migrants were reluctant to leave.

Genesy, 5, poses in front of her family’s set of tents in the Benito Juarez complex.

Maria, 40, with her daughters, packs up before moving from Benito Juarez.

“I’m really proud to be her mom,” Maria says of her 5-year-old daughter, Genesy. “Genesy is really creative. There have been a lot of obstacles traveling with the kids—for instance, Genesy was in the hospital with some sort of flu for four days in Mexicali. I was worried, but she was okay. We don’t know what we are going to do right now—we want to cross, but we might stay in Tijuana for a little, we might try and just cross the border, we might wait the two months to apply for asylum. I really don’t know. Back in [San Pedro Sula,] Honduras, we didn’t have enough money to eat. I worked cleaning and ironing clothes—on a good day I made $12.”

Abi, 4, at Benito Juarez.

Josue, 6, from the Honduran department of Colón at Benito Juarez.

Preparing to leave Benito Juarez.

The wall dividing the United States and Mexico at Friendship Park, on the beach at Playas de Tijuana.

The border on the beach between San Diego and Tijuana presents waiting migrants with a dilemma: Do they wait the untold months for their number to be called or do they cross illegally? Some jokingly call the section that stretches into the waves of the Pacific Ocean “Freedom Park” because it’s there that some choose to try to jump over the wall or slip through the fence. Border Patrol agents walk the area to Border Patrol agents drive their vans along the wall, but if they are out of sight, asylum seekers can try to cross and turn themselves in, where they can then officially apply for asylum and bypass the waiting list.

Mexican federal police exercise on the beach at Friendship Park.

Sofia, 22, and her cousin, Daniel, wait to enter the United States illegally, over the wall at Playas de Tijuana.

The sea wall at the beach at Tijuana provides multiple points of entry to migrants who are willing to try more than once to cross, and who are unwilling to consider the limbo of staying in Mexico. Despite barbed wire covering the top, there are places in the fences that have been weakened; some attempt to climb over or slip through concrete pylons.“I was so afraid they were going to shoot me,” Sofia says of a previous attempt to cross. “I just want to cross. My cousin went over three days ago and she’s already released and with our friends in Los Angeles. I didn’t go with her because I was scared, but we decided that tonight was the night. Now I’m anxious. That was terrifying. But we are going to try and cross once the patrols go away. Back in El Progreso, Honduras, where I’m from, I worked in a tortilla shop. I would work 12 hours and made around $5 a day for 12 hours of work. I want something better for my daughter. I have a number on the waiting list to apply for asylum, 1549, but I don’t think I’ll get it. I want a job. Plus, they told me the wait was two months. I can’t wait that long.”

Scaling the beach wall at Playas de Tijuana.

Despite the high level of Border Patrol and Mexican police presence at this part of the coastline, the border at the beach in Tijuana is the most popular crossing in the city. Adults climb first and pass children over to the other side; some mothers have heard that if you cross with your children, Border Patrol will only detain you for a few days.

Mariano, 35, speaks with his American girlfriend in San Diego.

Jackelin, 26, and her son Alexis, 5, are from Honduras.

Alexis and Jackelin were relocated to the Barretal shelter after the Benito Juarez complex was closed on December 2. Around 2,000 people have moved to El Barretal. They are traveling with her other son Luis David, 22 months; Jackelin’s mother María Elena, 42; and her boyfriend Jose, 21. “We lost the American dream before we ever tasted it because Trump wouldn’t let us in,” says María Elena. “We thought he would. My daughter can’t go back to Honduras because her ex-husband wants to kill her. That’s why we were living in southern Mexico for six months before the caravan came through. But then he found her there. So she can’t go back to Honduras because he knows people there. The two kids were surprisingly fine to travel with. They really went with the flow. Alexis is extremely intelligent and generous—he has made friends with a lot of the other kids traveling. He always shares his toys with the others. He and his brother get along—Alexis takes care of him. If he’s crying, he comforts him. If he’s going to fall or if he’s wandering around, he stops him. He’s responsible. Privacy can be hard to come by, especially with kids. We have to all bathe outside right now and you’re never alone. Luckily, I like talking to people, but it’s still not easy.”

Cindy, 17, is from the Honduran department of Colón. El Barretal.

“I came with my cousin; she’s 13. We decided to come because we don’t have have any money to study, and that’s what we want, to be able to move forward. I like learning about other countries and want to study in the social sciences. At the other shelter [Benito Juarez], everything would just get flooded and there was so much trash. We only waited at the old shelter, even after they cut the water, so that we could be sure that we would not be getting deported when the government put us on buses. Even when we were getting transported here I still wasn’t convinced that the Mexican government wasn’t going to deport us. We thought we were going to have to break the windows. We don’t want to go back. We are now living in a tent with 10 friends, but many have left with coyotes [smugglers], but we don’t have any money for that. We live with my mom and grandmother. My mom can’t work because she’s taking care of my grandmother, who is really sick. We had to rely on the little from church groups to survive. I had heard about the other caravan in April, and then I saw a poster circulating on Facebook about this one and decided to go. I want to work, to be able to send them money back.”

The end of the wall dividing the U.S. and Mexico in Tijuana is on the east side of the city. Border Patrol agents on ATVs ride around on the American side.

American officials claim they don’t have the resources to process the migrants at a faster pace. A rumored Trump administration policy called Remain in Mexico has yet to be unveiled but would require the cooperation of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the new Mexican president: It would mean that even once asylum seekers have set foot on U.S. soil, they would have to return to Mexico to wait for their claims to be processed.

The wall near the border’s end in Tijuana: “Mexico—USA. Our love has no boundaries.”

Reginald Reyes, 65, has lived in Tijuana near the end of the border wall since 1980, and has seen the evolution of surveillance and police increase exponentially in the decades since.

“When I got here,” he says, “there were just two cables with a sign saying not to cross because it was the U.S. border.”

Reyes says that every day he sees migrants cross his property. “Some with a smuggler, some without. But it’s dangerous here—there are criminals who try to control the crossing. I walk here every day and find women who [criminals] have raped . . . and anyone else they assaulted who wanted to cross. The people who want to apply for asylum just turn themselves in to the agents, but the ones who are trying to sneak in undetected go into the canyon and disappear. Some make it, some don’t. We need bridges, not more walls.”